HEALTH HOLIDAY

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 113, 15 May 1942, Page 6

HEALTH HOLIDAY

REV. JASPER CALDER

MISSIONER'S AMERICAN TOUR

The Rev. Jasper Calder, Auckland's dynamic city missioner, has returned from a holiday tour abroad. That information ordinarily would make any Pressman prick up his ears in expectation of much vivid material of high adventure and unexpected happenings—but this was different. It was a health trip.

The Rev. .Jasper's health had been far from good—his normal life of high-pressure activity gradually had taken its toll until, last September, he was ordered abroad to recuperate.

Consequently he had a nice quiet time—merely riding an occasional bucking bronco and winning a tendollar prize at a rodeo, travelling thousands of miles, speaking to a few million people over the air in national hook-ups from public platforms. teamed with world-renowned film stars, dashed through the air occasionally in mammoth Boeing B1 !)'s or in Lockheed bombers, enjoyed a few sea trips on sprayenshrouded destroyers and GO-knot motor torpedo boats, or relaxed on the sea floor in a submarine.

The interviewer hesitates to speculate as to what form this wellknown cleric's holiday activities would have taken had he been in good health—whether, perhaps, he might have organised a mission choir of reformed gangsters and exbootleggers or instituted theological training classes for repentant murderers to become missioners among unregenerate politicians.

However, forced to lead the <iuiet, sedate existence of a semi-invalid, Mr. Calder filled in the rest of his time abroad with a sojourn into the crime laboratory of New York's police headquarters. where the latest scientific methods of crime detection were demonstrated, by accepting a week's lecturing engagement at a school of navigation (the Rev. Jasper is wholesomely proud of the fact that he is a practical seaman and navigator), by visiting various prisons and preaching in the chapels — including the famous Tombs prison, since demolished.

Visits to Hollywood, where he met and liked many noted stars —incidentally he mentions that many of the younger men are already in uniform and keenly enjoying the life— and to Detroit, where for a week he was the guest of Mr. Henry Ford, pleasantly filled in some of his spare time.

Mr. Calder carried out many preaching engagements, which brought him into close touch with clergy of the Episcopalian Church, for whose qualities and hospitality he developed a very warm regard.

Finally, the wandering missioner appropriately concluded his health tour by working his passage from California to Australia cn a fast freighter carrying a cargo of war equipment. His job, as a practical seaman, was the important one of supervising the proper arrangement and lashing on deck of war planes. He arrived in Auckland yesterday.

His health, he states, is much improved.